I didn't mean to say that the CRA was the only cause for the housing bubble. There were a lot of factors that lead to the housing bubble.
My point was that the CRA was the beginning of a decade long non-partisan policy shift that signaled to regulators, Wall Street, etc. that owning a home was an unqualified good thing and looser standards for lending against homes should be encouraged.
Once the government and regulators signal to Wall Street other investors that they are encouraging the deployment of capital to a new, loosely regulated asset class it creates a dangerous environment.
On Wall St, we wound up with a multiple trillion dollar problem. That's tr-, not b-, as in 1,000X bigger.
The CRA thing is ideological bullshit. I seriously do not understand how anyone who passed 3rd grade arithmetic could buy into it.